Small clue reveals explorer's huge endeavour

The brass nameplate that gives an insight into the fateful route
taken by Ludwig Leichhardt (left) through the Australian outback,
acquired by the National Museum of Australia.Photo: Andrew Taylor

Sarah SmilesNovember 24, 2006

LEADING a group of men, horses and bullocks on an expedition to
cross the continent in 1848, Prussian explorer Ludwig Leichhardt
reportedly carved in a trail of trees his initial, L.

No other trace of Leichhardt's expedition, which vanished
crossing the vast interior from Queensland to Western Australia,
has ever been authenticated  until now.

Scientists and historians from the National Museum of Australia
have recently analysed a tiny brass plate bearing Leichhardt's
name, originally discovered by an Aboriginal stockman near Sturt
Creek on the Western Australia-Northern Territory border about
1900.

Their authentication has partially laid to rest "one of the
greatest mysteries of Australian exploration", Arts Minister Rod
Kemp said yesterday. Until now, historians have only been able to
speculate on how far Leichhardt journeyed, the route he took, or
where he may have perished. The location of the plate between the
Tanami and Great Sandy deserts reveals he achieved two-thirds of
his planned journey, said Matthew Higgins, a senior curator at the
museum. "We still don't know how much further he got  but at
least we know he got that far, and that's a massive achievement for
a European at the time."

A clump of human bones and coins found near Mount Dare in the
1930s were thought to have been his remains, while other historians
speculated Leichhardt perished in the Simpson Desert.

The plate's location suggests instead he was following a
northern arc from Moreton Bay in Queensland to the Swan River in
Western Australia, following the headwaters of rivers, as opposed
to heading straight through the desert interior, Mr Higgins
said.

The plate was found attached to a partially burnt shotgun slung
in a boab tree engraved with the initial L. "Had there not been an
L on the tree, it could have been argued the firearm was found
elsewhere and traded among Aboriginal people (who) had put it in
the tree," he said.

It was later passed to Reginald Bristow-Smith, a district clerk,
whose family kept it sealed in a small metal box for generations.
It was loaned to the South Australian Museum in 1920, went to the
Public Library of South Australia a few decades later, then was
returned to the family. Bristow-Smith's descendants have sold it to
the National Museum for $200,000.

Questions remain as to why the gun was left in the tree, and how
Leichhardt's party eventually perished.

"Why he left it in that manner was he sort of
memorialising himself, we just don't know," Mr Higgins said,
speculating they could have died from lack of water or from an
attack by Aborigines. "His hope was that the watercourse might lead
him all the way to the south-west or at least to the coast, but of
course it just disappears into the desert."